About

About The Blog

I’m using this blog to document everything about my journey as an entrepreneur, a software developer, and freelancer. I’ll be documenting my success and failures, journalling them as I go, giving a transparent look at things I’m trying, things I’m thinking about

About Me

I’ve always been creative, and that led me into developing ideas for potential business opportunities. In fact, one of my earlier business ideas is what led me into learning web development in the first place. Buyabox was a small business I set up to sell used cardboard boxes (yes – used!). I need an e-commerce site but didn’t want to spend thousands on getting one built. So I learned to code, and after 6 months I had a simple, straight-forward website ready to take orders. My limited skills at the time actually helped, because it meant my site was extremely simple to navigate and use, something my competitors neglected to focus on, and something my customers loved.

I’m always open to new challenges and problems. If you think you have something I might be interested in, get in touch.

Technologies I use

HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript (ECMAScript 5)

I’ve been building interactive websites for years using the core web technologies, keeping up to date with the latest developments in each language. This means your project is modern and up to date, maximising maintainability, performance, and security

Angular 1+2

Angular is a massively popular framework from Google that lets developers build feature-rich web applications in a fraction of the time it used to take. Using Angular means cuts down on the time needed for coding, meaning your project is delivered quicker. Since Angular is from Google, it will be supported for many years to come

Node.js

Node.js is one of the latest server-side technologies that lets developers use JavaScript on the server. Performance, reliability and scalability are some of reasons Node has become such a hugely popular choice for backend infrastructure to support websites and apps

Ionic

Ionic is a fantastic framework for building cross-platform mobile applications that can be listed on the Android and Apple app stores. It can be used to build web and desktop applications too. It uses Angular under the hood, bringing the speed and efficiency of web development to mobile and desktop apps.

WordPress

For setting up a manageable, customisable website, there isn’t a better choice than WordPress. Simple to use and update, it’s my go-to for landing pages, e-commerce sites and can even be tweaked into an MVP webapp in a lot of cases

Tools I use

Git

Git is indispensable in my work, allowing me to roll-back to previous file versions if necessary. Git allows me to work fast, confident that everything is version-controlled. It drastically improves development speed and allows developers to take chances with their code, knowing that reverting back to a previous version is as easy as a single command in the terminal

GitHub

GitHub is a cloud service for Git, and is essentially a backup for all code I write. This means that the code is safe and recoverable, so there’s no danger of work being lost to a corrupted hard drive or a theft

Sketch

Sketch is a my graphics tool of choice. It’s a little like Photoshop, but specifically built with web development in mind. This lets me generate artwork on the fly, quickly build mockups and test out colour schemes without waiting for an external designer

Heroku

I use Heroku to host any web applications or node.js servers. Heroku lets me put your project on the web quickly, safely, and securely. I use Heroku when I need a fine-grained control of the backend, building APIs for web and mobile applications.

Sublime Text

Sublime Text is my text editor of choice (Although ATOM is looking very interesting). The community support and plugin ecosystem is fantastic, providing the tools and automations that help me get my work done

Subscribe to Chris Dermody

Get the latest and greatest from Chris Dermody delivered straight to your inbox every week.